Category Archives: Ministry

Passion Week:

is the week starting on Palm Sunday until Easter Sunday. It’s the time where Jesus entered Jerusalem until the day he resurrected from the dead. That’s this week! We want to take time this week to remember what Jesus has done for us.

What would you do if you had 3 days until you died? Most of would answer that we would travel or spend time with friends. We would go skydiving or whatever dream we always wanted to do.

What did Jesus do 3 days before He died?

Jesus did what He came to earth to do, He taught people about what it meant to follow God. He spoke in the temple, he taught in the streets to crowds of people and to anyone who would listen. Jesus stayed true to His mission even in His last days on earth.

When I see how Jesus spent His last days, it reminds me to make the most of my life and to continue to do what Christ has called me to do. In my life that mission is to raise a family that loves Jesus and to instill the importance of following Christ and loving others to students in my ministry.

What has God called you to do? Are you doing it?

Passion Week . . .

is the week starting on Palm Sunday until Easter Sunday. It’s the time where Jesus entered Jerusalem until the day he resurrected from the dead. That’s this week! We want to take time this week to remember what Jesus has done for us.

Jesus is in the temple observing people. He sees people as they come in to give their offerings to God. He probably see people from all different lifestyles giving their money to God, but the person who sticks out in His thoughts is a poor widow. She was a widow, so she had very little income, if any at all. She drops in two small coins into the offering bucket, while everyone else is putting in large amounts of money.

Jesus comments that her gift is worth more than anyone else’s because her giving hurts more. It’s more of a sacrifice. For example, when someone has $10, it’s easier to give $1, you won’t notice it as much as you would if you had $1 and gave 10 cents. When you give when you have little, the sacrifice hurts more.

Jesus is teaching us that sacrifice hurts. He shows us the ultimate example of this just a couple of days after this by giving His life for us.

Jesus teaches us that sacrifice hurts. What are you sacrificing to follow Christ? Does it hurt?

Passion Week . . .

is the week starting on Palm Sunday until Easter Sunday. It’s the time where Jesus entered Jerusalem until the day he resurrected from the dead. That’s this week! We want to take time this week to remember what Jesus has done for us.

Jesus tells a story about a vineyard owner who sends his servant to collect his share of crops from his vineyard and the farmers working at the vineyard kill the servant. Then the vineyard owner sends his own son and the farmers killed him too so that they could keep the share of the crops.
In this story Jesus is telling the Pharisees about how they have not welcomed God’s son, rather they have treated Him (Jesus) badly and are going to kill him because they want the control of their lives and of the lives of the people around them. They were willing to disregard Jesus for their own gain.
How have you disregarded Jesus because you wanted to what you wanted to do and not what Jesus wanted?

This is a blog series that I’m doing for the junior high ministry that I’m a pastor of, so I thought I’d share it here.

Passion Week . . .

is the week starting on Palm Sunday until Easter Sunday. It’s the time where Jesus entered Jerusalem until the day he resurrected from the dead. That’s this week! We want to take time this week to remember what Jesus has done for us and what He was actually doing today, 2000 years ago.

Today the people of Jerusalem praised Jesus by laying down palm branches as a “red carpet” welcoming him and praising Jesus for what he’s done and what they THINK he’s going to do. They THINK He’s going to save them on their terms, but Jesus has other plans as the rest of the week goes on, we learn what He is really calling his followers to.

The people of Jerusalem praised Jesus for who He was. How have you praised Jesus today?

Currently, I’m sitting in a comfy chair drinking my morning coffee at Starbucks. I get here relatively early, so I usually don’t have to stand in much of a line. About 10 or 15 minutes later, the line gets considerably longer. As I’m sitting here watching people join this line that will probably result in them being here for about 10 or so minutes in order to the the coffee the drink to fuel the caffeine addiction they have created for themselves (myself included), it got me thinking about what we spend out time on.

As a pastor, I’m always encouraging people to spend time with God in prayer and studying the Bible. The most common excuse that I hear is about how people don’t have time to spend with God and yet, we spend at least 10 minutes in line for our morning latte, huh.

In John 10:10 Jesus talks about how He has come to give life, and give life to the fullest. We spend so much time looking for life in the bottom of a coffee cup, sports, activities, working out at the gym, hoping that it will give us enough energy to get through the next few hours or the rest of the day, yet we don’t spend 10 minutes a day with the one who actually created us and gave us life. Jesus gives us insight and opportunity into how we each are uniquely made and what gives us sustaining life and purpose.

What if instead of looking for life in things that are temporary, we looked for life from Jesus, the giver and sustainer of life. The one who will never leave or fade away and will always be there. Join me in evaluating not only HOW we spend time in our life, but more importantly, WHERE are we looking for life?

So the highlight of junior high small groups tonight went like this. . .

JH guy 1 and JH guy 2 were throwing pieces of a bush at each other. I walk up and they act as if they were going to throw pieces of bush at me. I tell them that if they throw it at me I’ll “beat them up.”

JH guy 1: let’s both throw it him
JH guy 2: ok
JH guy 1 continues to throw, JH guy 2 doesn’t
I chase down JH guy 1, put him in a headlock and JH guy 2 hits him with pieces of the bush

When I let him go:
JH guy 1 to JH guy 2: Your turn throw it at him
JH guy 2: No way, after what I just saw, I’m going to, that would be dumb

So I am sitting down about to sign a stack of thank you cards for the Gong Show fundraiser that we had a couple of weeks ago and it got me thinking about important volunteers are.

The Gong Show is a fundraising dinner that we do each year. We weren’t sure if we were going to do it this year because of some structural changes in our student ministries, we thought we just didn’t have the time to put on this very work intensive event. We decided to go forward and the only way that it was able to happen was volunteers. People gave up their time and money in order to make it happen and it went great.

So as I sit next to this stack of 30 or so thank you cards, thank you to everyone who makes ministry happen.